


Locked in

by Caoten



Category: EOS 10 (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grocery Store, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 11:22:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13856772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caoten/pseuds/Caoten
Summary: Ryan  works at a gas station. Akmazian disturbs his work at a gas station. And if that wasn't bad enough, it seems like Ryan will have to spend even more time with him, but that's just what happens when you get locked in in a store with a stranger.





	Locked in

**Author's Note:**

> Akmazian? Making me happy? It's more likely than you think.  
> (There are...not a lot...of EOS 10 fics, so I thought I'd do something for the good cause).

It was a slow shift. An incredibly slow shift. Sure, people had been coming and going, but it still really felt like nothing had happened all day.

Ryan had been in a desperate need of a job for quite some time, and he had even been  _ thankful  _ when Mr. Urvidian hired him. He had had to quit his last job at a local healthcare centre due to, well, let’s say an  _ accident _ . A very unfortunate  _ accident _ . (In reality it had not been an accident at all, but entirely his fault. But he prefered to think of it as an accident).

To summarise the last months of his life, he had gotten fired, he had locked himself in his apartment for a few weeks, as his reference from the healthcare centre had been everything but positive - which greatly impacted his chance of getting hired, and then, his friend Jane had talked her boss into hiring him. His friend Jane, who worked shifts at a gas station. A not so local gas station.

Anyway, here he was. Behind the counter out in the middle of nowhere. Outside, he could see cars driving past, maybe a car every ten minutes. He had been counting cars for the past two hours now. He had gotten to fourteen.

Ryan sighed. He looked to the clock. 12:35. Just twenty-five more minutes. He sighed. He looked to the clock. 12:35. Fuck, twenty-five more minutes. He started drumming with his fingers on the counter and continued to sigh. The sighs turned into violent yawns. He looked to the clock. 12:36. He groaned, and slumped his face down into his hands, leaning on the counter. As the clock ticked its hypnotising  _ tic, tic, tic, _ he felt how his eyelids got heavier and heavier and how his brain slowly, slowly checked out.

The doorbell chimed.

“YES?” Ryan yelped out, with an embarrassing voice crack, as he had been startled awake by the person who had entered the gas station

The man in the door - dressed in a huge poncho and leather boots and carrying an enormous hat - looked up at him, surprised, and then proceeded to stare at him for five additional seconds, before turning away to walk down the aisles.

Ryan leaned over the counter to try and get another glimpse of the strange man, he stretched his neck as far as he could - trying to milk the very last drop out of this welcomed distraction from the immense boredom of his job. He searched the store, and after a time way longer than it should take to find a fully grown man in a small store, he spotted him. Or, well, he spotted his hair. He had not realised how incredibly short the man was, barely reaching over the aisles, just his brown, chaotic mess of a hair visibly making its way through the station.

Suddenly, the hair made a sharp turn around one of the aisles, heading straight for the counter. Ryan clumsily tried to hide that he had been staring at the stranger, hastily picking up a paper note and a pen to pretend to write something down, but he just ended up dropping both of them on the floor. He felt how his face grew hot, and he quickly bent down to pick them up, When he stood up again, there he was.

“Howdy,” the man greeted him with a drawl.

_ Howdy. _

“Y-yes?” Ryan stammered, before collecting himself enough to remember his job. “Welcome to Kwik Fill, what can I help you with tonight?

The man looked at him without breaking eye contact, and then gave him a quick once-over before speaking.

“I can think of a few things.”

Ryan stared at him.

“I-”

“ _ Ryan!” _ The shout cut him off. Mr. Urvidian’s voice came from the office located at the back of the station.

Ryan quickly turned around to answer, but then looked back over his shoulder at the man standing on the other side of the counter.

“Excuse me, I-”

The man winked. “By all means, go ahead. I’ll wait for ya, for sure.”

Ryan nervously ignored him and instead turned back around to call back. “ _ Yes,  _ Mr. Urvidian _? _ ”

“I want you out in five. I will be locking when I’m down and I refuse to stay here even a second longer than I have to!”

“Okay, Mr. Urvidian!” Ryan shouted, and quickly turned back to the man standing waiting at the counter. “So, Sir, What can I-”

“Akmazian is fine.”

Ryan stared at him.

“What?”

“‘It’s nice of you to call me Sir n’ all, for sure, but you can call me Akmazian.” He put an arm up on the counter and leaned closer with a confident grin playing over his face.

Ryan was not sure how to react. “...Sure,” he said and leaned back just a bit.

It was quiet for a few seconds, before Ryan once again remembered what his job was. “So...”

“Huh?” the man who insisted on being called silly names said, seeming to have gotten stuck staring right ahead out into space. He shook his head as to get rid of the brain fog, and cleared his throat. “Oh, yeah. Could you come with me and show me where I can find the…” he seemed to trail off, lowering his gaze down Ryan’s body. “...cream.”

“Cream?”

“Yeah, the…cream. For, uh, cream for baking.”

Ryan squinted at him. “It’s right there with the other dairy products, though.”

“I didn’t see any,” the man said and slid a hand onto the counter. “I think you should probably come and show me.”

Ryan looked at him, and the man raised an eyebrow and bit his lip in response. It was incredibly off-putting.

“Okay.”

“Great!” the man said with a smile just a bit too wide for the occasion. “Lead the way, sugar boy!”

“Please don’t call me that,” Ryan said, but walked around the counter to show the man where the he could find the fridge that was standing literally fifteen feet away anyway.

“Whatever you say, darlin’”

The man followed close behind him, and about ten seconds later, they were standing in front of the dairy fridge.

Ryan pulled out a package of cream and handed it to the man who called himself Akmazian. “Here you go.”

The man stared at the package, and then back up at Ryan’s face. “Oh, did I say cream? I meant bream.”

Ryan looked at him in disbelief. “You meant  _ what? _ ”

“Bream. Like the fishes.”

A line formed between Ryan’s brows. “You need fish for baking?”

“I-” but before Akmazian could finish his sentence, a quiet ‘click’ came from the doors, and the lamps went down with a low whir.

Ryan grew pale. “Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no!”

He did a 180 ° turn-around and almost fell when he ran sliding down the aisles for the doors. When he reached them he pulled at them violently to get them to open, but it was no use. Mr. Urvidian had already left, and he had taken the keys with him. Ryan gave up the losing battle, and leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the door.

“Well, that is damn unfortunate,” Akmazian’s voice came from behind of him.

Ryan sighed and turned around, drooping where he stood. It did not look like Akmazian thought it was unfortunate at all.

“ _ Damn _ unfortunate,” he repeated, staring down at Ryan’s body.

“You know, my eyes are up  _ here _ .”

“I know.”

Ryan met his eyes. He had never seen a man look so sincere in his entire life. He sighed.

It was going to be a  _ long  _ night.

 

* * *

 

 

 

_ Dut. Dut. Dut. Dut. Dut. Dut. Dut. _

“Will you  _ please  _ stop that?”

_ Dut. _ “What?” The grape Akmazian had just thrown at the wall fell down with a quiet thud and rolled in under a shelf.

Ryan rolled his eyes. He checked the clock. Five more hours. Five more hours until he was saved.

“You know…” he heard the man say. “You can sit there and pout on the floor all ya want, but I really think we could better entertain each other.”

Ryan looked up.

“...Together,” he added, and something gleamed in his eye.

Ryan groaned and put his head in his hands.  _ Good grief, how did he end up here? _ He inhaled deeply and dragged his hands down his face. He looked at the man. “ _ Fine _ .”

Akmazian lit up with what Ryan could only describe as childish glee. “Oh, lovely! I’ll go right ahead and help myself then!” he said and quickly slumped down on the floor next to the other man.

Ryan frowned.

Akmazian scooted closer. “So, love, ‘s Ryan, right?”

Ryan looked at him, and nodded. “Yeah. And what is your name, again?”

“Akmazian. But you can call me...  _ Akmazian _ .” He winked.

Ryan gave him a deadpan look. “Yeah, I got that the first time. But that’s like, like a nickname, right?”

Akmazian gave him a puzzled look. “...It’s not?” he said, almost turning his answer into a question.

Ryan stared at him. _ Who the hell was this tiny man!? _ He quickly collected himself and dragged a hand through his hair. He guessed he could spend the remaining hours trying to find that out.  _ Anything  _ to get the time to pass,  _ right _ ?

“So,” he began. “What do you work with?”

The man stared at his hair where his hand had just been. “Oh, you know,” he said without taking his eyes off of his head. “A bit here and a bit there.”

“Not my question.”

Akmazian did not seem to have heard him. He definitely had though. “But let’s not talk about me. Let’s talk about you, I wanna know all about you before the night is over, darlin’.”

Ryan looked at him with deep suspicion and a tint of disgust. He _ was  _ going to find out who this strange  _ Akmazian  _ guy was. “...Sure.”

It was quiet for a few seconds. Ryan opened his mouth.

“So wha-

“You’re rea-”

They both fell quiet. Akmazian gave him a sheepish grin.

“Go ahead, honey. I could listen to you all night.”

Ryan was not sure how much more he could take. “Uh...So, you got a girlfriend?” Anything to get something out of this obnoxious, flirting bastard.

Akmazian looked at him, and then snorted. “No, I’d say the opposite is what I have.”

Ryan stared at him.

“...I have  _ no  _ girlfriend,” Akmazian answered.

_ God. _

Ryan sighed, already having finished four fantasies about how he could the easiest smash a window open and escape. “You ask me something then.”

“Oh, if you insist.” Akmazian rubbed his hands together in a deeply disturbing manner, like he was a Disney villain with an especially mischievous plan, or perhaps a fly preparing to start its feast on something particularly tasty. Ryan did not want to know which one it was.

“D’you wanna come back to the storage with me?”

Ryan’s jaw dropped.

Akmazian quickly raised his hands as to defend himself. “Just pulling your leg, kid! Just a joke!” He slowly lowered his gaze. “Or, I mean…”

Ryan coughed. “Up here.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Akmazian waved him away, still keeping his eyes far too low for it to be in any way subtle.

That was it. He could not take it anymore.

He stood up, and carefully brushed the floor dust off of his pants. The man on the floor followed his hands’ movements with his eyes. Ryan ignored it, and instead began to turn around to walk away.

Akmazian seemed to snap out of his creepy, lust induced trance. “Wai-wai-wai-wait!” He scrambled up onto his feet, and flashed Ryan an apologetic smile. “Sorry ‘bout it, I’m just joking around.” He quickly scanned Ryan’s face, in which he could only find the emotion of ‘being completely and utterly fucking  _ done _ ’. “It’s in my blood, ya know? It’s true! Actually, my father was a famous comedian!”

Ryan raised an eyebrow at him. “ _ Really _ ?”

“No,” Akmazian admitted. “But it would be fun if he was, right?” He tried to nudge Ryan with his elbow, but quickly let it fall back down to his side when he realised that they were not standing close enough for him to reach the other man.

Ryan felt really embarrassed for him.

They stood in silence for a few minutes. The air pressure seemed to double, and Ryan could almost feel sweat breaking up on his forehead, even though the station was freezing. He awkwardly rubbed his elbow.

“So...what do you want??”

He saw how Akmazian got that gleam in his eyes again as he opened his mouth, but he slowly closed it again.  _ Smart choice. _ “What do you mean?”

Ryan measured the shorter man in front of him, did some quick calculations in his head, looked to the door, and then back at the man.  _ Oh, he didn’t… _

“You planned this, didn’t you?”

Akmazian’s face went blank. “...What?”

Ryan felt his blood go to his head. He was really getting tired of this  _ Akmazian _ guy. “I said you planned this. You didn’t even need any cream. Oh, sorry,  _ bream _ . Now that I think about it, why would you? We’re in the middle of a bloody desert for Christ’s sake!”

Akmazian stood completely stunned in front of him, lips shut tight. Ryan took the opportunity to continue raging at the man.

“You’ve been a creep ever since you stepped a foot in through that door.” He pointed to the doors for dramatic effect. “If you only wanted  _ me _ \- wait, are you  _ stalking _ me? No, nevermind, please don’t answer that. Back to the point. What’s your deal, man? Also, what’s up with that  _ fucking poncho _ ?” His shoulders heaved up and down when he was done screaming, and he was breathing heavily. He looked to Akmazian’s face.

The man was fucking  _ smiling. _ Had he not been clear enough? He gawked at the weird man that had invaded his store just three and a half hours ago. What was he even supposed to do with him at this point?

Akmazian’s eyes beamed, and he cracked his mouth open into a full-out grin. “You look like an angel, you know that right?

Suddenly, Ryan’s brain experienced a slight meltdown.  He crouched down to the floor and grasped at his hair. He hiccuped. And then he could not stop himself anymore. He burst out into a hysterical laughter, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not stop. He laughed, and laughed, and laughed. It was no use.

He felt a light, awkward pat on his uncontrollably shaking shoulder. Akmazian’s voice came from above of him. “Are- Ryan, is everything okay? God, did I break you?” The hand disappeared, but then came back a second later, but firmer, and this time Akmazian’s voice came from just beside him. He must have crouched down. “I didn’t know you’re such a fragile guy.” He paused. “Though I guess I should have guessed it, with you sporting all those dainty pretty-boy features and all.”

Ryan whimpered in pain from laughing and turned his tear-streamed face towards the other man, still some coughs of laughter escaping him. “You’re impossible, aren’t you?”

It took a second for Akmazian to compose himself after having seen a grown man have a mental breakdown right in front of him, but then his face turned into a wide grin. “I think I am.”

 

* * *

 

 

 

At 7:30 AM, half an hour late, Jane put her key into the door to her place of work - the not so local Kwik Fill gas station. It was the wrong key. She tried another one, and this time the doors slowly buzzed open.

She stepped inside, and sighed deeply. She checked her clock.  _ 7:31 _ . Just eight hours and twenty-nine minutes left until she could go home. She sighed again, as long as she could (or to be more specific, until her breath hitched and she was sent into a painful coughing fit).

When she was done coughing, she carefully wiped the tears away from her eyes to avoid smudging her makeup. She then straightened her back, made a little content huffing sound, and sauntered up to the counter as though she had not just nearly coughed her lungs out. She was just about to start looking through the drawers under the counter to find the signs for the storefront window that she had prepared during her last shift, as well as her hid-away muesli bar, when she noticed a pile of...well,  _ something _ , on the floor. She hadn’t brought her glasses so instead she squinted at it to see what it was, making her look like a suspicious pterodactyl.

“Huh.” It was grapes. Just a bit over a hundred, she assumed, based on the size of the pile. She was sad to admit that this pile of grapes was probably the most exciting thing she had seen at the station for at least a couple of weeks.

A loud grunting sound, coming from behind the door to the storage room, made her jump in her shoes. She spun around.  _ What the fuck was going on on this day _ . She grabbed a broom that was leaning on a nearby wall, and raised it in front of her like a pike. She proceeded to slowly, slowly creep towards the door.

She kicked it open with what she would describe as the perfect drop kick. It wasn’t.

“Ah- _ hah! _ ”

She landed on both feet, tumbled forward a few feet before getting back her composure, and then raised the broom behind her head and waved her other hand in front of her challengingly. Her eyes darted back and forth and she scanned the room like a huntress.

Her jaw dropped.

At the opposite wall, squashed between two high towers of crates, two figures were leaning against a pile of stocked sugar. Sleeping. Jane immediately recognised one of the figures to be her friend Ryan, the guy she had gotten to know by silently flipping peas at in the middle school lunch hall. For some reason he was wearing a gigantic sombrero.

The other figure, she did not recognise.

It was an incredibly small man, gremlin-sized to be exact, and he seemed like he was wearing a tent, as he was drowning entangled in his large, orange, probably homemade, poncho. It had lots of cute threads at the bottom, she noted. Other notable fashion choices of his were high leather boots,  _ very _ tight leather pants, and a huge, golden earring in his right ear.

The two men were profoundly entangled in each other’s limbs.  _ Intimately, one might say _ , Jane thought to herself and made an act of covering a theatrical gasp with her hand for dramatic effect. She was an actor by trade, or, at least she liked to view herself that way. Especially when talking to attractive strangers at parties.

Anyway, her friend, and this strange, little man whom she had found him sleeping with, were laying on their sides, embracing each other in a position commonly referred to as  _ ‘spooning’ _ . Though Jane, an expert in the field of love, instantly recognised this was not in fact spooning, but  _ ‘jet packing’ _ , as the gremlin of a man was clinging to Ryan’s back like a very dedicated koala. One of his legs were pulled up over her friend’s hip, and his arm that was pressed against the floor had a firm grip over Ryan’s entire face. Jane had to stretch her neck to see where his other hand was, and redid her excessively dramatic ritual of surprise when she saw that the man’s right hand had snuck in through the buttons of Ryan’s shirt, and was now resting where Jane could only assume to be her friend’s hip bone. Ryan’s free hand was lightly placed on the stranger’s ass. Jane gasped again, nearly driving herself into another coughing fit.  _ How scandalous! _

She decided enough was enough, and quietly tiptoed across the cold floor mat towards the two snoozers. She crouched down beside Ryan, and silently studied the man who was lying behind him’s face. He had a rugged, mysterious look, with a light, badly cared for beard and dark untidy hair. This man probably had not seen a comb in his entire life. She nodded in approval.

She then slowly reached for and removed the enormous hat from her friend’s head, so she could put it on her own head instead.

Just as she was about to pat herself on the back for having successfully committed the perfect crime, the strange man opened his eyes with a wild, startled expression.

“My hat!” he gasped.

“How the-” Jane began, before the man forcefully ripped it off of her head and tenderly put it back on Ryan’s. Ryan himself had been startled awake by the other man’s erratic, excessively hat-protective behaviour, and was now sitting in confusion blinking at Jane. His hand was still firmly grasping one of the man’s asscheeks.

“Jane? What are you-”

“Ssh, sssh, ssshh!” Jane interrupted, and forced her index finger up to his lips. “Say no more.” She stood up, and started to back away towards the door.

“No, Jane, what-” Ryan confusedly looked around searching for an explanation, and a startled shriek escaped his lips when he realised he was in an intimate embrace with a close-to-stranger on a cold storage room floor.

Jane smiled understandingly, as she opened and stepped out through the door, and nodded like she understood everything, which she was certain that she did. (She did not).

“I’ll leave you two to it, don’t mind me,” she smiled, and quickly closed the door.

As soon as she had closed the door behind her, she quickly pressed her ear towards its hard surface. She heard the quiet, mumbling sound of Ryan stuttering, and then suddenly being quiet. A few seconds later she heard a deep sigh, and an unknown voice she assumed belonged to the poncho-dressed loverboy: “She’s right, you know.”

Jane sighed and put her hands on her hips. _ Finally. _ She shook her head and turned around to face the day.  _ It was about time he got some. _

**Author's Note:**

> Oh shit. Is this the 100th EOS 10 work on this site? Damn.


End file.
